Like the city itself, this Marseille Requiem reveled in expansive personality. It was a performance that can only be described as exuberant. Taking over from the aged Lawrence Foster as…
Author: Michael Milenski
Carmen in San Francisco
Francesca Zambello’s 2006 Covent Garden Carmen rehashed once again by San Francisco Opera. This time with French mezzo-soprano Eve-Maud Hubeaux in the title role. In 2017 alone Mme. Hubeaux transformed…
Everest by San Francisco’s Opera Parallèle
San Francisco’s alternative opera company has just now revived its 2021 production of Everest, a 2015 Dallas Opera commission about climbers on Mount Everest, here reimagined as a graphic novel…
Tristan and Isolde in San Francisco
In the 1870’s Richard Wagner built a special theater for his operas, a theater where the words of his poems might flow clearly from the stage into the hall. One…
The Handmaid’s Tale in San Francisco
Feminist dystopian opera. The Royal Danish Opera’s 2022 production of The Handmaid’s Tale found fertile field in San Francisco! In short Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel made into an opera…
Un ballo in maschera in San Francisco
Where were the censors who once plagued Verdi’s Ballo just now when they should have saved us from an abysmal staging at San Francisco Opera! It was the 2016 production…
Falstaff in Paris
It was magic from the start, Verdi’s in medias res chords exploded and tumbled, Danish conductor Michael Schønwandt established the solid, brisk beat, brilliantly illuminating Verdi’s vast musical complexities to…
Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Rossini Opera Festival
The city of Pesaro is the 2024 Capitale Italiana della Cultura, adding luster to its 2017 Unesco designation as a Città Creativa. All this calls for celebration, and that was…
Bianca e Falliero at the Rossini Opera Festival
Expectations were high in Pesaro just now, not for the new production of Bianca e Falliero by French stage director Jean-Louis Grinda (expectations were low), but of the Rossini Opera…
Ermione at the Rossini Opera Festival
Ermione (Hermione in the Greek myth, though Rossini’s opera has nothing to do with the myth or Euripides tragedy) was anticipated with great expectations both because Michele Mariotti, Pesaro’s conducting…